Do we fall for parodies/trolls too easily?

[womensrightsrhumanrights]

I’ve noticed a few mentions of the attempted cancellation of ‘Natural Woman’ within several threads. Five minutes of research showed me this originated from a parody/troll account on Twitter and has very quickly created outrage among people who don’t know how to recognise this.

I wonder if it might be useful to create some sort of list of ways to recognise when things like this aren’t genuine?

Bump…

I have to say that as someone who reads this forum but rarely posts I'm often surprised at how easy it is for wind up merchants to trick you. There are quite a few threads that are full of outrage about things that are quite obviously fake and created to make GC people cross.

It's not always easy because the genuine trans accounts are so mad themselves. I think we mostly do suss out fakes here.

However:

An anonymous twitter account with 103 followers calling for a song to be banned doesn’t matter. Even if it were genuine it wouldn't matter.

Elected representatives standing in front of placards calling for women to be murdered do matter.

100%. Like when a poster innocently comes to FWR, the best place to learn from trans people about trans issues, to ask about "trans womens' menstrual cycles"

Like, come on now..

Please say noone actually fell for that...

I mean, when the satire is not any more unbelievable than things people are saying seriously, I feel like it's reasonable. Like, you'd think that transwomen talking about their "time of the month" and how difficult the mood swings, cramps, and other associated period symptoms are would be satire, but it's not. It's not even uncommon.

nothing that is a parody is more of a parody than India, or Jane or Shona. That is why everyone gets confused.

''Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture saying that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.''

I don't think there is any easy or surefire way of telling who is a troll and who isn't, or what is fake news. IMO it shouldn't be considered shameful to be caught out because none of us are immune to being scammed.

"I was only joking" is a very old get out clause.

But generally... dont believe anything you read online. Look at stories from many angles. I've seen the same story (not this one) published by both TRA and GC media putting a different spin on it.

It's all a parody at the minute, what I see as parody is someone being serious. The whole damn thing is one pomo art project. The people that are taking it seriously are elected politicians, heads of departments, schools, NHS etc etc etc.